


rehashed

by fatiguedfern



Series: same faces; different voices [3]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: But I was too lazy, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hints of backstory, Kinda, NDRV3 Spoilers for chapter 1, just... don't read the summary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 00:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10628727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatiguedfern/pseuds/fatiguedfern
Summary: Kaede was merely an observer to Akamatsu's life and Akamatsu appeared to have the lifespan of a fruitfly.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I may have tagged this as canon comliant but not everything in this will be all too accurate.

Her cheek is pressed against a cold metallic surface when she wakes. Light leaks through the slitted surface of what she assumes to be a door. Her own shallow breathing rings through her ears and her head pulses in a steadier rhythm than her heart beats. She presses the entirety of her weight against the surface and the hinges give way with a groaning creak. 

Her entrance from what she can now see is a locker is less than elegant, the force she used to pry open the locker causing her to lose her balance. She tries to grip at the side of the locker to steady herself, only for her numb legs to fail her and fall face first into the tiled floor. The collision does little to ease the pain in her already-throbbing temple. Pushing herself up from the cool tiles with a groan, the girl starts taking in her surroundings. She stares at the the barbed-wire-threaded windowpanes with creased brows and a wave of unease flooding her mind. Just as she’s about to move closer to examine the worrying sight she’s distracted by the startling sound of a crash that comes from the corner in which the temporary metal coffin she emerged from moments ago stood.

A boy who appears to be around her age follows the same clumsy actions of her unceremonious exit and flopped to the floor with a high-pitched grunt. The boy startles to his feet and stares at her with accusatory eyes before opening verbal rapid-fire. While ignoring the boy’s slurred allegations, she uses the time he wastes on repetitive questions to drink in the rest of the settings details. Her dazed thoughts finally register that the oddly-lit room resembles a classroom. An abnormal looking classroom at that. 

Once the boy slows his tangent to a speed that she’s able to somewhat follow, she shuts him up with a dismissive remark. The silence finally allows her to collect her thoughts and the fog surrounding her latest memories prior to waking up propped up in the locker clears enough for her to recall some of what happened. 

She remembers making her way to school, alone for once as her sister had caught a cold earlier in the week. She’d been humming some game show tune that had subconsciously found its way stuck in her head the previous night. Her broken droning had soon been cut off by a pair of gloved hand grasping at her shoulders. She doesn’t remember any of their features and the men might as well have been completely faceless shadows for all her memory cares, but she remembers being forcibly lead into a van with blacked-out windows and a blotted out numberplate. And then...nothing.

She explains to the boy that they’re most likely in similar positions with a partial politeness that she’s struggling to maintain while her head still throbs and he’s still staring at her with wide eyes. The boy seems to pause for a moment too long for someone who was just thinking over the brief explanation she’d given him. Her eyes narrow and she struggles to keep control over her tongue that’s itching to express her own distrust. She’d be in quite the fair bit of trouble, had she angered someone who might be of importance (though she highly doubted this was the case with the boy) in this situation which she knows nothing about. 

She stiffly holds her hand out for the boy to shake, hoping that the boy would at least somewhat ease the weight of the one-sided pleasantries from her shoulders. The assistance never does come and she nearly rips into him, it’s hardly as if cordial greetings were currently on her current checklist either.

“What’s your name?” she asks while carefully regulating the tone in which she speaks, cautious of already allowing herself to reveal her hand. 

“Oh, right. I’m Shuuichi Saihara…Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” the boy says with only the slightest of tremors colouring his tone, finally stretching out his hand to meet her grasp. His hand is almost too soft, his grip too gentle and though the contact was expected she still hardly manages to keep the disdain from off her face as she returns his introduction. 

“Kaede Akamatsu.”

~  
Kaede can feel her cheek pressed against a familiar metallic surface, but her eyelids don’t react as she wills them open. The breathing that rings through her ears is louder than before, but perhaps that was because she suddenly finds herself able to pick up all of the fluctuations of volume in each breath. The ache between her temples is still present and when her eyes do slide open, it doesn’t seem to be of her own accord.

She feels completely detached from the movements her body performs next, yet she still feels the texture of the cold metal as it slips away from beneath her finger and still registers the pain as her head collides with the floor. Her eyes refused to so much as twitch in their sockets as she attempts to look around the room she’s quite certain she’s already acquainted herself with. 

A thud sounds through the room and the sound is almost deafening to her newly acute hearing. Had she been able to, she would’ve groaned as she sees the boy she had met earlier slump into the concrete floor again, but that’s not the case and she’s left to watch in horror as her body cheerfully interacts with the docile boy. Her traitorous tongue refuses to cease its movement, no matter her command. She still fights against whatever has her body in its control, but her efforts are in vain and her movements not her own.

She, her possessor and Saihara eventually make their way out of the room and into the overgrown hallway. This time their met with one of the others that Kaede recognizes from the gym. The interaction plays out much the same as the latest one with Saihara, with Kaede unable to change any of the words said and by the time they’ve reached the last person she recognizes she’s somewhat gotten used to the pattern. 

The duo (or trio, arguablly) make their way to the gym once more. It’s already filled with no-longer-nameless faces and unfortunately the multi-coloured bears from before soon joins their ranks. Kaede’s suspicions are confirmed as the same monochrome plush as the inanimate one that used to stare at her from its position propped on her sister’s neighbouring bunk makes an appearance. She’s almost happy at the fact that she’s acting as an observer and not a participant, because it’s not her palms that sweat or her bile that rises in her throat and it’s a lot easier to label her devastation at being picked as a contestant as a feeling of elation.

Kaede isn’t quite sure how to explain her being anymore. She supposes she could be classified as some sort of subconscious now, but a conscious part of one’s mind would surely have some sway over the body’s main inhabitant, so that couldn’t be the case. More likely than not she was just a remnant of pre-game Kaede Akamatsu’s memories that had caught on the edge of her mind during their removal. So that left her in some constant state of limbo, haunting the existence of the newest Kaede Akamatsu. When she thinks about it like that, then it really isn’t the possessor who should carry the cheap horror title.

It would seem that her supposed role as a participant would be leader-like in nature and she hears “Akamatsu” uttered in her so-called classmates’ varying tones far more than what could be considered pleasant in the following two days, so much so that even her last name became something that was not hers. Any name that was hers simply isn’t meant to be spoken with any trust from others. At least she had something solid to call her possessor now. 

Monokuma’s first motive is taking oddly long to prepare and it leaves Kaede, the shows unwillingly most avid watcher, wondering when the bear would get his t shit together. Frankly, she didn’t think she was going to last much longer having to watch the fake out detective follow Akamatsu like a lost puppy, nothing against the kid, she just wasn’t used to being someone else's crutch, nor is she enjoying the experience all too much. When the motive is finally announced, she’s less than impressed by it. Two days to kill or everyone’s offed? How bland. She can however almost feel the clogs turning in Akamatsu’s side of her mind. With all the worrying Akamatsu was doing, she’s a shoo-in for protagonist. 

So, Akamatsu is definitely not the protagonist. She can’t believe she fell for the old protag-bait. Kaede stares at the weighted ball in her hands. Definitely not the protagonist.

The trial starts off running smoothly and Akamatsu’s conducting the entire thing, despite the fact that with each utterance of the series’ telltale phrase she’s only condemning herself. It’s about midway through the trial when Akamatsu appears to reach her breaking point, handing over the reigns to a reluctant Saihara. It’s at this point that Kaede loses her own focus on what’s being said. She’d at least take the small amount of time she has left to think back on her life and what not. At least she was able to do so, she thinks. Not for the first time during the trial she finds herself pitying Akamatsu and her 4 day-lifespan.

All too soon the trial’s ended and she’s dragged off to whatever execution awaits her, perhaps if she was lucky it might even be one of the more memorable ones. It does turn out to be memorable (or maybe she’s just biased) and she thinks the sight of a strung-up girl being dragged across a giant piano must be rather ridiculous, though her disbelief doesn’t last all that long. Kaede faintly recognizes the tune from the mandatory music class in kindergarten and then she’s distracted by the thick rope tearing at her skin as it jerks her body with each played key. And then for the first time Kaede and Akamatsu’s actions intertwine as they both gasp at their dying breath and then… nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I'm still not a fan of fake memory plots and whatever, but it was pretty fun to think of Kaede as someone that had heard a shitton of fan theories etc herself


End file.
